The flagon with the dragon has the potion with the poison, the vessel with the pestle has the brew that is true
"When compared with those who do not have tea, people who consumed two or more cups each day had between a 9% and 13% lower risk of mortality, researchers said, concluding, "drink enough tea and you become effectively immortal""
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 0:14,
Reply)
WTF does this actually mean?
"When compared with those who do not have tea, people who consumed two or more cups each day had between a 9% and 13% lower risk of mortality, researchers said."
(
P-MONKE We're all fucked, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 0:48,
Reply)
overall mortality is where you compare two groups of people, tea drinkers and non tea drinkers, and see how many die in the period of interest
It's correlation, not causation, as they say in the article. so there might be some other factor other than the actual tea itself that accounts for the difference. Perhaps the kind of people who drink tea are also the kind of people who go to the doctor when they feel a funny lump on their nuts or tits instead of ignoring it.
Or it could be it has a calm destressing moment in the day that has health benefits. But 10% less dead is not an insignificant finding. there's plenty of health interventions that are a lot more trouble and expensive that have far smaller effects. Some, like taking antioxidant vitamins, actually increase your overall mortality risk when they've done meta-analysis
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 0:59,
Reply)
NIce overview. ta.
Sorry for being a little bit thick lol
Edit: I re-read your post. lol
(
P-MONKE We're all fucked, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 1:04,
Reply)
they usually do it by your chance of dying in any given year
in this case they were only looking at the 40 -69 year old demographic as their cohort, so it might be different for younger or older people.
So after determining their tea drinking status, they'd monitor them for 1 or more years to see how many died.
or to put it another way. if 210 people died of any cause of the group studied in a year, 100 would be tea drinkers and 110 would be non-tea drinkers for them to arrive at that figure.
These are comparative mortality rates, rather than absolute rates. So at age 50 it's going to be the difference between 0.005 and 0.0052 as I think the normal chance of dying in any one year is about half a percent at that age, but I could be wrong
Edit: no worries, p-monke. those are exactly the kind on questions you should be asking when confronted with some study. I wish more journos would do the same when covering science stories. it's a bugbear of mine
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 1:12,
Reply)
No single dietary item is likely to extend life significantly if your diet is fairly balanced
There's also the problem of relying on people self reporting what they stuff their faces with. These observational studies mainly generate good clickbait headlines and support the BS superfood industry .
Speaking of life expectancy and scientific attempts to postpone decrepitude and death - this is an informative read: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/605002/ageless-by-andrew-steele
(
Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 9:25,
Reply)
I'd go even further and say we have little idea what a balanced diet is
apart from the obvious damaging shitty foods
We seem to all have highly varied gut biomes from individual to individual, and we're really in the infancy of our understanding. The majority of gut bacteria have not been identified, and those that have we have little idea if they're good or bad or what ratio is healthy. It may be what is healthy food for you is not as healthy for me, and vice versa,
As to the tea study, it was from spain's second best uni, and published in the globe's highest ranked internal medicine journal, so I wouldnt dismiss it out of hand as big tea propaganda. The study and the article had the appropriate caveats about drawing conclusions, but it's an interesting finding and worth further investigation
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 12:38,
Reply)
I think Michael Pollan's general advice "eat food, not too much, mostly plants" currently makes sense
I'd like to see the study repeated in a population which consumes more fruit and veg to see if tea consumption still makes a difference
An alternative explanation for the results reported in the Annals of Internal Medicine is that people ticked the tea box instead of the alcohol one and we all should drink more of the latter
(
Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 13:02,
Reply)
not sure why you've bolded that, are you making an anal joke?
it is the highest ranked internal medicine journal, not Men's Health, so we should have some confidence the study was configured decently. If there was an issue in false self-reporting, I'd expect people to falsely claim they drank tea when they were pissheads, so it may be that tea-effect is even more pronounced than they found
If I had to speculate without reading the study to see if they adjusted for confounding factors, I'd say the effect of tea was limited and more of the effect was from correlation between tea-drinking and socio-economic status. Wealthy people have better health outcomes, especially with NHS becoming fucked. Tea used to be working class, but costa coffee, starbucks and lad culture is changing that.
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 23:21,
Reply)
It's bolded to indicate I'm aware of the potential anal joke
Isn't that in the b3ta style guide?
(
Mudface The web isn't callipygian, Wed 31 Aug 2022, 1:11,
Reply)
ha, I thought our back and forth was becoming a bit dry
and you dont want that with anal
(
cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Wed 31 Aug 2022, 1:19,
Reply)
Interestingly, taking high doses of B12, has an association with lung cancer. Normal doses found in food/multivitamins don't. Another case of more not necessarily being better.
theconversation.com/vitamin-b-supplements-linked-to-lung-cancer-heres-why-you-probably-dont
I drink lots of tea to help lower my iron (haemochromatosis), no bad effects yet.
(
FeralCatMan Long ads need comments sections, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 16:29,
Reply)
Well that ought to cancel out all the biscuits then
(
wheresthefish Partly filled with wrong, Tue 30 Aug 2022, 9:32,
Reply)
